College and Research Libraries ROSE SEGRE University Libraries in Italy: The Crisis Persists Italian university libraries are poorly organized and underutilized de- spite efforts by professional librarians, who are few in number and given little of the deserved consideration in an atmosphere in which the growing importance of the library in the field of learning is not always understood. An international congress to discuss new develop- ments in library technology as applied to academic libraries could con- tribute immensely to the improvement of the Italian university li- brary system. cULTURAL EXCHANGES between the United States and Europe reached their highest level in the 1950s and 1960s. Ful- bright programs and other initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic offered the economic support to encourage scholars and researchers to pursue the compara- tive study of social institutions of dif- ferent countries. Libraries soon became the center of interest of some of these studies and in 1951 an almost continu- ous exchange of information began be- tween Italy and the United States in the field of librarianship. Anne V. Marinelli was the first Amer- ican librarian to go to Italy as a Ful- bright scholar in 1951 to lecture to li- brarians. In 1955 Vernon Tate succeed- ed in organizing an extended visit to the United States by eleven Italian librari- ans, and the next year he went to that country in order to assess the practical results of such programs. He contacted each person who had been in the United States the year before and, incidentally, found that only one of them was active Ms. Segre is hea.d, Acquisitions Depart- ment, Adelphi University Library, Garden City, Long Island, New York. 184/ in the academic library field. Stanley West continued the exchange of infor- mation by conducting seminars in sev- eral Italian cities. Academic libraries had been ignored, however, until Robert Vosper was asked to survey Italian services in 1960 with the assistance of a Fulbright grant. Vos- per found the problems of these librar- ies so serious that he recommended that another librarian should continue the investigation, and suggested that T. H. Hamlin be invited to do so. Vosper's re- port was published in 1962 in College and Research Libraries and Hamlin's survey appeared in Libri in 1965.1 These studies revealed the deficiencies of Italian university libraries: an almost absolute dearth of funds, both for the conservation and updating of their ex- tremely valuable collections and for the organization of adequate library ser- vices to students and scholars. While the lack of financial support was obvious, another basic problem of perhaps more serious character was identified: the ab- sence of coordination among the librar- ies of the various institutions, resulting in an unfortunate dispersion of already insufficient resources. These problems, ingrained with the bureaucratic intrica- cies of the Italian government (which controls all Italian universities), were freely discussed by the two American li- brarians, without the danger of getting involved in the sort of political contro- versy that might have discouraged an Italian. Once the questions had been raised, the Italian librarians did not miss the opportunity to follow up the justified criticism with proposals de- signed to remedy the situation. It took many years and infinite pa- tience to reach the spheres of govern- ment responsible for changes in higher education, but there is now before the Italian Senate a plan for library reor- ganization in the overdue riforma uni- versitaria. Italian librarians have em- phatically reported that significant im- provement can come only with a com- plete restructuring of the administra- tion of the university library system. Many of the arguments presented in the plan are based on the Vosper report, which after ten years is still of the ut- most significance. In the last decade, however, no new significant idea had been heard from the United States. Were American librarians so busy build- ing up collections and services at home that they had lost interest in finding out what was happening abroad? American university libraries had ex- perienced an entirely novel cycle be- tween 1960 and 1972. The economic prosperity of the United States, coupled with government funds provided through the higher education bills of the 1960s, triggered an unprecedented growth in the collections and facilities of the libraries · of the American col- leges and universities. The abrupt end of nearly unlimited financial resources in 1970-71, however, forced American librarians to grapple with the problems caused by budget ·cutting. The skir- mishes at home may thereby have caused the relevance of a distant fight to fade. Still, an effort should. be made ·to reopen University Libraries in Italy I 185 among librarians the dialog that, in the past, has proven very fruitful in iden- tifying basic problems. I felt I had the qualifications to try to do so, and above all the desire to share in the line of communication be- tween American and Italian librarians. I was born and raised in Italy, but my higher education and professional train- ing have all been in the United States. I could combine the advantage of many contacts with friends and relatives ac- tive in libraries and universities in Italy with twenty-five years of active working experience in American and Canadian university libraries. When offered the opportunity by Adelphi U Diversity to take a sabbatical leave of absence, I was able to carry out my wish to contribute to an exchange of ideas in my profes- sional field of interest. I started my visit in Rome, and one of the first persons I saw was the direc- tor of the Fulbright exchange program in Italy. She showed me a copy of Vos- per' s final report to that commission and helped me plan my trip so as to follow as closely as possible in the footsteps of Vosper and Hamlin. This was very help- ful because of the limited time at my disposal, further restricted by my plan for a thorough visit to the National Li- brary · in Florence and for a survey of the results and advantages of the meet- ing that had been held in October 1968 under the aegis ·of UNESCO and the Ministero Italiano della Publica Istru- zione. In Italy there are twelve university li- braries. They are government sustained independent institutions and by law .their functions are: ( 1) to offer to stu- dents the necessary assistance for those studies which are being completed at the university to which the library is relat- ed, and ( 2) to· provide for the profes- sors the research facilities appropriate to the subjects being taught.2 The e li- braries are . usually housed in university buildings, but 1n aU other respects they 186 I College & Research Libraries • May 1974 are neither dependent upon nor admin- istered by the university. Their collec- tions vary in size from as many as 850,000 volumes in Rome to less than 150,000 at the Sassari University. The holdings of these libraries consist in large part of a wealth of rare book col- lections and a richness of very long and complete sets of periodicals, many of which started publication well over a century ago. The distribution of the holdings of the Pavia University Li- brary, which is one of the oldest in Italy, may be taken as a typical example. In round figures, as given by a member of the staff, of the total 400,000 vol- umes there are 1,800 manuscripts, 600 incunabula, 6,000 cinquecentine (books printed in the sixteenth century), 9,000 books printed in the seventeenth cen- tury, and 22,000 printed in the eigh- teenth century. Thus almost 10 percent of the entire collection is represented by rare or antique documents. In addi- tion this library currently receives 3,000 periodical titles. These libraries should function as central university libraries, but in prac- tice their main concern is the conserva- tion of great bibliographical wealth. The funds available for new acquisi- tions are minimal and are all used to continue the subscriptions to periodical and serial sets and to buy the most im- portant reference titles which may be of interest to the whole university. These libraries are depositories for books published in their region. For the purposes of this paper I will call these twelve libraries university libraries. In Florence, Milan, and Trieste, where there is no national university library, the li- brary of the Faculty of Liberal Arts (I am using the word faculty in the Euro- pean sense, i.e., department of study) functions as the central library of the university. A university system serving three- quarters of a million students obviously cannot be sustained by the resources of these ·fifteen libraries. Whatever spe- cialized publications and research ma- terials are at hand are to be found in "special libraries" developed by the pro- fessors of the faculties and institutes independently, without any coordina- tion and following personal criteria. Literally hundreds of these "special li- braries" are found in each university. A special commission of the Italian Li- brary Association reported in 1968 an estimated number of 2,000 such librar- ies scattered all over Italy, with an ap- proximated total of volumes close to ten million. 3 That is about twice as many volumes as those owned by the twelve university libraries. These "spe;.. cial libraries" vary greatly in size and quality. Some consist of a few hundred books shelved in the office of a profes- sor, others are much larger and were de- veloped according to an efficient and scholarly plan, but always limited to the scope and programs of the institute. Many "special libraries" are very diffi- cult for a visitor to find; their location is not known by many people, and most of them are closed for use to outsiders and often to the students. There is no coordination or communication among them or with their university library. The incredible dispersion of re- sources and funds caused by such a blatant lack of coordination is common- ly recognized as the most serious prob- lem facing the academic libraries. In practice the situation has become even more critical in recent years. The funds assigned by the government to the uni- versity libraries become less and less ade- quate and instead the ever greater spe- cialization of university studies makes the "special libraries" more and more sought after by the professors for the support of their researches. The director of the Alessandrina, the national central library of the Univer- sity of Rome, has taken important steps toward improving the · situation there. The compilation of a union list of seri- .. als received by the university library and by all the "special libraries" of the uni- versity is almost complete and will be published soon. An attempt to compile a union catalog of books encountered much greater obstacles. No help was of- fered by the "special libraries"; the per- sonnel of the university library had to collect all the information and subse- quently recatalog each title in order to assure uniform entries in the union catalog. Although this project is pro- ceeding very slowly, .it shows a begin- ning of cooperation among the libraries of the University of Rome. The Ales- sandrina is one of the most service- oriented libraries that I visited in Italy. It is open to the public from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, except Sunday, an ex- traordinary number of hours according to Italian standards. This almost unique orientation . is confirmed by the data shown in Table 1. The number of con- sultations at the Alessandrina in 1970 represents 32 percent of the total num- ber of consultations at the twelve uni- versity libraries of Italy, while its hold- ings represent only 16 percent of the total holdings of the same libraries. New books acquired by the Alessandri- na are cataloged by using the printed cards published by the Italian National University Libraries in Italy I 187 Bibliographical Center, similar to our own Library of Congress cards. These cards were not ordered by any of the other libraries I visited, and original cataloging was practiced everywhere, even by the smaller "special libraries" with no professional librarian. While in Rome I was able to visit ex- tensively one institute library and one faculty library. The library of the In- stitute of the History of Roman Law, housed in the same building as the cen- tral university library, is under the di- rection of a very able librarian who keeps very sophisticated bibliographical controls over a highly specialized col- lection. The use of this library and the services offered by the staff, however, seemed to be limited in practice to the director of the institute, a few assistant professors, and a small portion of ad- vanced students, who have access to it upon special request. The perfect bib- liographical organization of this li- brary is a source of pride at the univer- sity and indeed it must not have been a coincidence that this seHsame library was shown to Robert Vosper twelve years earlier. It must be assumed that its performance is not indicative of the conditions of other institute libraries. Through personal contacts I met the TABLE 1· TwELVE ITALIAN UNIVERSITY LmRARIEs-CoLLECTIONs AND UsE 1960 1970 Books Period. Books Period. andMSS Subs. Consultations Loans and MSS Subs. Consultations Loans Genova 537,087 801 61,898_ 6,977 536,652 1,169 43,109 6,722 Pavia 378,088 817 50,962 1,250 403,368 714 59,250 1,419 Padova 418,390 701 32,803 3,577 463,461 1,000 61,319 6,550 Bologna 569,708 4,785 106,974 1,296 632,802 4,063 156,278 1,607 Modena· 404,739 650 60,918 2,583 510,570 1,205 63,405 3,443 Pis a 279,450 433 67,593 5,634 310,640 568 75,717 6,486 Rom a 732,555 5,909 435,940 2,987 838,651 5,602 320,208 2,137 Napoli 657,105 461 76,780 2,638 690,523 920 60,843 2,670 Messina 145,196 600 36,079 5,836 173,638 604 47,876 7,197 Catania 219,857 664 58,531 9,749 252,944 687 68,673 8,351 Sassari 110,698 462 21,516 1,536 128,167 575 42,104 1,562 Cagliari 430,608 1,860 21,018 3,205 464,164 2,333 22,648 4,560 Total 4,883,481 18,143 1,031,012 . 47,268 5,432,580 19,440 1,021,430 52,704 188 I College & Research L ibraries • May 1974 librarian of the Facolta di Magistero (School of Education), a large old building at the opposite end of Rome from Citta Universitaria, and had the opportunity of observing the operation of the library housed in a bare, huge room. Its collection of about 30,000 vol- umes, mainly modern Italian and for- eign literature, is shelved in closed stacks and organized by (in the words of the librarian) a broad "personal" classification system. The staff (one li- brarian and three clerks) does all the original cataloging, which consists of an author list with a few subject entries, added recently. The library serves sev- eral thousand students, but it is open to them only twenty hours a week. I be- lieve that I can safely say that this li- brary is representative of the majority of the faculty libraries of the Italian universities. In Rome there are many scientific in- stitute libraries, but in the limited time at my disposal I was not able to visit any of them. World Guide to Libraries, in a partial listing, mentions six faculty libraries, with holdings varying from 68,000 volumes in the Facolta di Medi- cina to 6,000 volumes in the Facolta di Architettura; in addition twenty-four institute libraries are mentioned, with holdings from a maximum of 50,000 volumes in the Istituto Matematico Guido Castlnuovo to merely 4,500 vol- umes in the Istituto di Clinica Medica e Terapica. These are valuable collections of specialized publications, . but are practically unknown except to a hand- ful of scholars. The problem of these scattered and elusive "special libraries" is obviously rooted in the age-old financial stringen- cies, but it is also caused by the scarcity of professional personnel. The univer- sity libraries are all staffed with experi- enced librarians who strive to establish modem methods of bibliographical con- trol that would allow a higher percent- age of students and scholars to have ac- cess to the collections. They are willing to allocate a large part of their budgets to improving library services. On the other hand, the professors responsible for the "special libraries" are specialists in their own discipline and see only the value of spending their allocated funds in buying desperately needed material to support their research. They are un- willing to contribute to the financial and organizational costs of making the collections available to the larger uni- versity community. The chaotic state of the university li- brary system is at the center of the argu- ment presented by the librarians in their pleas for inclusion of the libraries in the wider plan for the restructuring of Italian higher education. The Italian Library Association · took the lead in furthering this position. The report of a special commission for the study of university libraries, presented at the eighteenth annual meeting of the asso- ciation in 1968, described the situation in detail and once again pressed for the inclusion of library reform in the bill providing for changes in the adminis- tration of the universities. 4 The major theme of university reform is based on the principle of establishing depart- mental units as centers for the teaching of similar subjects and disciplines, rath- er than the many independent units now in existence. The commission pro- posed a parallel reorganization in the administration of the libraries: the uni- versity libraries would act as coordinat- ing centers, taking advantage of their professional expertise and bibliograph- ical wealth, and the hundreds of inde- pendent "special libraries" would be grouped into new departmental units, thus avoiding the waste now caused by frequent duplication of materials. The highlights of this report were fi- nally officially submitted to a senate hearing in 1969 by a librarian, F. Bolbo- ni. The ' :language used in his presenta- I I~ tion strongly emphasized the need for reform: The wealth of the Italian Universities is pulverized among hundreds of spe- cial libraries at the personal disposal of certain professors, who often deny their use even to the students, who are actually contributing to their financial support.5 On this occasion Balboni repeated once again the idea that the institute li- braries should be consolidated into few- er departmental libraries and that the twelve national university libraries should become "Biblioteche d' Ateneo." The focal point here is to constitute a unique university library system, where the university libraries and the "special libraries" would become part of the same administration. Specifically the proposal envisages the functions of the central university library limited main- ly to organization and coordination of resources, and those of the department- al libraries dedicated totally to serving students and professors. While such rad- ical changes involving the transfer of the ownership of the collections and of the personnel from one branch of gov- ernment to another would encounter many bureaucratic involvements, ex- tremely difficult to surmount in the pres- ent Italian political climate, the obvious benefits that would derive from them should · encourage their acceptance, which in the end might relieve consid- erably the present economic pressure as well as some of the student and faculty discontent. No one expects the government to act quickly in adopting the proposals of the Italian Library Association, but the calls for changes are heard and understood, and meaningful legal dispositions are occasionally passed by parliament with the hope of improving the situation. These scattered efforts, however, often lack the financial and administrative support that would be necessary to put them into practice. A government de- University Libraries in Italy I 189 cree to the university libraries in 1967 recognized the need for coordination among services and charged these li- braries specifically with the responsibil- ity of instituting union catalogs.6 It failed, however, to provide the funds necessary, and it ignored the fact that the university libraries and the "special libraries" had never had any effective contacts among themselves and that there was no administrative force that could supervise interlibrary cooperation. The very important coordinating func- tion was never assumed by the univer- sity libraries, except in rare cases such as the Rome library. As early as 1961 the Office of Higher Education approved 295 library posi- tions assigned to the university insti- tutes. 7 But unfortunately at the same time this law limited the function of these librarians to that of bibliograph- ical experts and assigned all adminis- trative powers to a professor appointed director of the library. This ruling, ob- viously, caused resentment and embar- rassment to the library profession and proved to be self-defeating. Most in- stitute libraries continued to be regard- ed as personal collections and very few took advantage of this authorization to hire professional librarians. After ten years this incongruity was redressed by yet another official ruling by which the librarians were clearly in- vested with final authority in all library matters, and faculty committees and deans were given advisory roles with re- sponsibility for procuring adequate fi- nancial support for their libraries. The functions of the academic librarian were thus officially recognized. This final ruling should be encouraging to the young librarians, striving for an im- provement in status, which thus far has been at a very low level with respect to salary and to academic prestige. These provisions and proposals prove without doubt that the academic librar- ians in Italy have not been standing still 190 I College & Research Libraries • May 1974 in the last ten years. Unfortunately I found no concrete significant innova- tions in the practices of the libraries. The lack of funds kept their physical growth to a minimum. Their collections increased very modestly, as shown in Table 1, and the statistics for the use of materials by the students and profes- sors show a decrease, an almost paradox- ical situation when we take into consid- eration the fact that the number of university students has more than doubled in these years, going from 245,000 in 1960 to 635,000 in 1970.8 Many believe that most resources have gone into the "special libraries," but there are no data to prove it. · The Italian academic librarians are in dire need of help to carry out the changes that they so earnestly espoused in the last ten years. They showed ap- preciation for the criticism first offered by Vosper and Hamlin and they incor- porated many of the principles of the American school of librarianship, which emphasizes service over conservation. Now it would be most advantageous to bring into the exchanges the best meth- ods of applying some of our modern technological innovations to library structures so different from ours, wheth- er Italian or of other nations. The procedure employed at the Na- tional Library in Florence might guide efforts to offer practical solutions to the problems of academic libraries. In this case librarians from all over the world participated in the UNESCO-sponsored congress. The American Library Asso- ciation asked John Finzi of the Library of Congress to study extensively the re- organization of the National Library. He then presented a paper on this sub- ject to the congress in 1968. Professor Beck on the · same occasion outlined a program for the automation of library procedures.9 . These major contributions encouraged the director of the National Library · to approve a pilot project for the computerized production of special monthly supplements to the Italian Na- tional Bibliography using the MARC format of the Library of Congress. The pilot program was successfully con- cluded this year and the Automation Division of the National Library is ready to go ahead with the entire Italian National Bibliography as soon as the funds are approved. In conclusion, the advantages of an international congress on university li- braries similar to the one held in Flor- ence should be obvious. Participants from all over the world could expose the problems confronting their librar- ies, and solutions could be pooled for the benefit of all participants. Italian librarians could certainly gain from the experiences derived from automated projects in other countries; United States librarians could gain from a re- examination of traditional library theo- ries. Most American university and col- lege libraries are planned on the theory of bringing the students to the books in large central libraries, which at least until now proved to be a better solution than the Italian system of bringing the books to the scholars. On the other hand, the possibilities of producing book catalogs and of controlling elec- tronically the location of books might influence innovative approaches. The Italian proposal for a central li- brary functioning principally as the nerve center of a system of department- al libraries might be attractive to the American scholar and could .be a solu- tion to controlling the growth of huge collections, the access to which becomes more and more difficult to nonspecial- ists. From a distance one tends to criti- cize the jealousy with which the Italians cling to their collections, but one can- not help admiring at the same time the great personal pride and dedication in- vested in creating some bibliographical jewels in the tradition of the classical • independent scholar. And on further reflection, one may assign to a modified Italian system greater value than may be apparent at first. However, the adoption or rejection University Libraries in Italy I 191 of evolution and revolution in library administration can only be preceded by thorough, open, and wide discussion of all possibilities. Let us work toward the realization of such opportunities. REFERENCES 1. Robert Vosper, "A Recent Look at Universi- ty Libraries in Italy," College and Research Libraries 22:199-210 (May 1961); Arthur T. Hamlin, "The Libraries of the Universi- ties of Italy: A Study of Their Services and Collections," Libri 15:138-58 (1965). 2. Silvano Gerevini, "The Organization and Problems of University Libraries in Italy," Library Trends 12:550-57 (April1964). 3. Giovanni Coiro, ''Problemi delle Biblioteche Universitarie e Prospettive," Academie e Biblioteche d'I talia 37:277 (July 1969). 4. Ibid. 5. "Cronache e Notizie," Associazione Italiana per le Biblioteche, Bollettino d'lnformazione, n.s. 9:146 (May-Oct. 1969). 6. Coiro, "Problemi delle Biblioteche Univer- sitarie," p.279. 7. Ibid., p.278. 8. Annuario Statistico dell' Istruzione Italiana, vol. 23, 1961 and vol. 33, 1971. 9. Razionalizzazione e Automazione nella Bib- lioteca Nazionale Centrale de Firenze. Incontro di studi organizzato dall' U.N.E.S.C.O. e dal Ministera dell Pubblica Istruzione. Firenze, 29-31 ottobre 1968. Atti a cura di Diego Maltese. (Florence: Bibli- oteca Nationale Centrale, 1970). All other library statistics were taken from Istituto Centrale di Statistica, Annuario delle Sta- tistiche culturali, Anno 1960, tavola no. 66 and Anno 1970, tavola no. 32.